Jose Aldo's head coach says UFC is giving him 'no choice' but to fight again
After expressing interest in terminating his UFC contract to pursue other interests outside of mixed martial arts (MMA), it seems the UFC isn’t giving former UFC featherweight champ Jose Aldo the chance to walk away from the promotion just yet.
Aldo and longtime manager and head coach Andre Pederneiras have been meeting with the UFC over this past month to negotiate a potential release from his contract.
But Pederneiras recently told Brazil’s Combate (courtesy of Bloody Elbow) that the UFC is giving Aldo ‘no choice’ but to get back into the Octagon to fight again:
“Right now we have this Pettis vs. Holloway fight, and there’s Conor’s decision, too. We can only know what’s going to happen after that. Aldo wants to retire in order to do other things, but in these talks we had with the UFC, it became quite clear that they will not let him go to pursue that. There’s no choice but to fight. It’ll depend on the outcomes of these two fights. Pettis vs. Holloway and Conor vs. Alvarez. I don’t know what Conor will decide, but I believe February or March would be a good date to face him. They are fighting now, so there would be a good three, four month break.”
Aldo, the current UFC interim featherweight champion after defeating Frankie Edgar via unanimous decision at UFC 200 in July, was knocked out by McGregor in a record time of 13 seconds in their UFC 194 clash last December. After Aldo won the interim title in July, Aldo expected to rematch McGregor at UFC 205 in order to unify the titles, but ‘The Notorious One’ instead opted to attempt to make UFC history by challenging Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title in hopes of becoming the promotion’s first fighter to hold two titles in different weight classes at the same time.
Angered by this, Aldo decided to attempt to terminate his UFC contract and retire from the sport as a champion, but it appears the UFC is having none of it. With other top 145 pounders currently booked with contests of their own, it appears as though Aldo will have to sit by and wait for the conclusion of McGregor’s bout in New York in hopes of a potential rematch down the road.
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